Late films such as The Princess Bride, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Mask of Zorro had to modify the classic archetype to attract a big audience.
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Victorian-era authors of historical romances such as Walter Scott and Alexandre Dumas saw the art of rapier fencing as the origin of contemporary thrust-oriented small-sword fencing, and dismissed the earlier swords as heavy and fencing systems of earlier periods as inferior, slower and relying on cleaving blows and brute strength.
It tells the burlesque adventures of Tartarin, a local hero of Tarascon, a small town in southern France, whose invented adventures and reputation as a swashbuckler finally force him to travel to a very prosaic Algiers in search of lions.